


Hollownest No More

by rex101111



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Closure, Gen, Her home all she had ever known and loved is dead, Hornet finds out she had siblings only to lose them the next second, Hurt/Comfort, Moving On, So yeah she would be pretty fucked up I think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 04:33:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16674562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rex101111/pseuds/rex101111
Summary: The shadows consume the light, the screeching of old gods are forgotten.The regrets that weighed down every soul turn away, peaceful silence replaces them.Stone turns cold once more, and the ravages of infection subside.The cost has been paid.Now there is nothing left for anyone in Hollownest.---Hornet awakens to find her destiny fulfilled but her home long dead. She walks through its corpse one last time before she leaves for the wastes beyond.





	Hollownest No More

**Author's Note:**

> A short thing I promise....maybe....not too long winded this game is depressing.

Hornet wakes up with a shock-induced twitch of muscle, the taste of dirt in her mouth.

The temple is cold and silent around her, the choking smell and oppressive heat of the orange infection missing. She sits up and looks around, pockmarks dot the walls where pulsing pustules of madness had been before she lost consciousness.

_("Do it now!")_

She stands in one swift movement, darting her eyes back and forth to spot the little Ghost, or the massive body of the Hollow Knight, and finds neither. She notices for the first time that she is in a crater, the concrete of the stone cleaved away starting from a central point…where she finds it.

The mask, small twin horns marking it instantly. Empty. Cracked open down the middle like an egg.

She stares at the mask for a long while, a disbelieving numbness coursing through her as she realizes what this all means.

They have succeeded. The Radiance is dead. Her sibling is free of their shackles. The Pale King had finally paid his cost, and he had _won._

And she, all alone, is left standing.

Something begins bubbling from deep in her gut, and climbs it's way up. Bits of it escape as scoffs and quick peals of laughter as she begins to fully understand, fully see what has actually _happened._

_She is free._

She falls down on her backside as her laughter grows louder and louder in the empty temple, her eyes flying up to the ceiling, the weight of her destiny so suddenly yanked off her shoulders she can't find her balance.

Her laughter slowly dies down as she looks back down on the broken mask of her would-have-been sibling, a thousand different emotions and courses of action knocking around in her head.

She thinks back to her fights with the little Ghost, the memories causing some of the old wounds they had inflicted on her to flare up for a moment. She thinks of the odd impulse that drove her to dive into the crumbling corpse of the great wyrm to drag them out, thinks of seeing them climb out of the abyss…changed.

When they looked at her before the branded door as she spoke, she could swear they could _see_ her, truly comprehend her presence in a way altogether different from when they first met her in Greenpath.

They looked at her like that when she held down the Hollow Knight so they could strike it with the dream nail, those tiny black holes _focusing_ on her, and for a short moment, she felt her heart clench in a way unfamiliar to her.

She stared at the broken mask, the last remnants of the one who saved her once-home, and willed for that feeling again, so she could understand it. But all she could feel was a sense of…finality.

The vessels were created to stop the infection, to contain the old god of Hollownest who refused to die in peace and planned to drag all around it to destruction.

Their purpose was to _save_ Hollownest, to bring back the glorious golden age of the Pale King.

Instead the chosen vessel was unsuited to their task, and everything went straight to hell. The bugs of Hollownest fell into insanity and violence, the great knights fell one by one, and even the Pale King himself holed himself up in his tower to rot.

Three of the greatest minds Hollownest had ever seen chose to use their own minds as shackles and chains for the failed savior. Hoping that, one day, a vessel will come to fix what they could not.

That left Hornet, alone, to make sure they were strong enough.

She lost her sense of time at some point, her duty bearing down on her day and night, some part of her convinced that it was just her own personal prison, doomed to stalk the halls of her home until the very tunnels collapsed around her.

Enter little Ghost.

 It all took place in under two days, they trekked across the ruined Hollownest, defeated its corrupted denizens…and finally fulfilled what their 'father' had long since attempted.

Only the Hollownest they saved was long dead.

The Crossroads have broken down, the Greenpath over grown, even the Deepnest had fallen silent and feral (even more than it was before), and the City of Tears has long been empty of all but the dead and the insane.

There's nothing left for anyone in Hollownest…and if Hornet was being honest? There wasn't anything left for _her_ either.

She walked over to the broken mask, lifting the pale white shards with care, the emotions in her head beginning to settle. She turned on her heel to leave the ruined temple before it fell on her head, stopping only to pick up her nail.

She heard whispers of settlers in Dirthmouth, she needed to climb up and tell them there's nothing more to be found down here…and see if anyone of them knew little Ghost.

The least she could do was make sure that someone would mourn them.

She is their sister, after all.

( _A single drop of water fell at her feet as she walked passed the threshold of her siblings' prison, she dared not look back.)_      

**Author's Note:**

> In case you're wondering, "Do it now!" is the best guess I had to what Hornet was yelling at you while holding down THK. (ya know "GET GUD!")


End file.
